This story originally appeared in i-D’s The Royalty Issue, no. 370, Winter 2022. Order your copy here.
In an interview with Channel 4 back in 1994 — his final before passing away — the writer and journalist Dennis Potter shared these poignant words: “We forget or tend to forget that life can only be defined in the present tense; it is, and it is now only… The only thing you know for sure is the present tense”. Dennis had terminal cancer at the time of the interview, but believed that nowness had become “so vivid that, in a perverse sort of way, I’m almost serene.”
Photographer Paul Graham points to this quote when discussing End of an Age, a book he published at the close of the 90s, that observes the nighttime rites and rituals of young adults beginning to lose the “young” prefix; the wants, needs and expectations of adulthood closing in in the rearview mirror. Death isn’t imminent, nor was it when Paul published the book, but towards its end he wrote words that mirrored Dennis’s: “The best of time is always now, because it is the only time there is. Now is where I have to come to. It’s where I always was, but I never knew.”
Without any text, these are photos about partying and hedonism. But considering they so keenly observe time and ageing, and how both seem heightened as youth begins to fade, it feels particularly curious to return to this work 25 years later, with the images Paul has shared in this issue. Like the best photo stories that function as time capsules, End of an Age captured not just the end of an age but the beginning of one too (not simply for those in their late twenties and early thirties, but for everyone: “the end of many ages”, as Paul puts it).
Between 1996 and 1998, the timeframe in which he shot these photos, internet users grew from 36 million to 147 million globally. In Britain, Tony Blair was elected Prime Minister, Princess Diana died, and the Spice Girls released their first single. In the US, Fox News launched on cable TV, Bill Clinton began his second term as US President, and Steve Jobs returned to Apple as CEO, launching the iMac and setting the company’s ascent into motion.
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The dot-com bubble had risen and not yet burst, two hijacked planes hadn’t crashed into the Twin Towers and triggered a bloody war in the name of counter-terrorism, and most people didn’t even own a mobile phone (roughly 20% in the UK). But what followed was predetermined by what was then now, and Paul, seeing a change in his own life, felt compelled to create images that spoke to this personal transition.
“I guess I was moving from being a younger photographer into mid-career or whatever you want to call it,” Paul says of the where, when, and why of creating this body of work. “Realising that my time in clubs and bars and staying up all night was ending. That youth was ending. It was the end of the century, of the millennium, and it was the end of an era of white western dominance, so there was all that layered in there too.”
I ask him what he thinks defined his generation, Gen X (more progressive and sheltered but less wealthy than their baby boomer parents), as they stared down the barrel of adulthood. Very in keeping with the attitude of a pre-millennial, Paul comments that these labels don’t mean much to him. “I think so much of life is a universal experience – ageing, the struggle to make a living in something you love, figuring out relationships, marriage and children, if that’s your thing.”
Still, Paul enjoys the “contrast” these images now represent. “I love that nobody is on a smartphone in any of the images. This work was pre-that era, just, which is great. Phones have been a tragedy in our lives in many ways. Mine included.” And so I ask him if he feels nostalgic, even if the book’s core message does away with nostalgia. “Nostalgia – yes, I guess a bit. Including for myself. I don’t miss the smoking, though – it’s shocking how much people smoked just 25 years ago.”
“The best of time is always now, because it is the only time there is. Now is where I have come to. It’s where I always was, but I never knew.” End of an Age
These hazy, neon vignettes inside indistinguishable clubs, bars and parties feel so representative of this period not simply because of the abundance of smoking inside or the subtle style and beauty details that one can vaguely discern, but because of an intangible feeling of optimism the western world experienced in the late 90s. They weren’t shot in the UK, and Paul has kept their location a secret to keep them universal.
“If I said this was in Amsterdam, everyone would read it as being about young Dutch people or their discrete experience, so it’s much better to keep it universal. You can tell it’s somewhere white and western, and that’s all it gives up, and I wanted nothing more!” Most subjects were random people, many of whom became friends, “a couple remain so to this day, 25 years later,” Paul says. “I exchanged birthday wishes only this week with one friend who’s in there.”
Photography itself has changed so much since Paul first made images from this book, too, so I ask how his relationship with the craft of image-making changed. “Oof! Art surprises even the artist with its twists and turns, what it reveals and uncovers,” he says. “As an artist, you need to be careful that you don’t slip into making passable imitations of your own work. That facility can become an obstacle to finding new, more satisfying forms, to being alive to creativity. Looking back, though, maybe my work has changed from trying to encourage people to be more socially aware, into inviting them to be more emotionally aware. Is that just my personal path, my self therapy, or something others share? You can be the judge of that.”
In culture at large, we obsess over the transition from teenager to young adult. But Paul has rightly captured a period which, though informed by the trends and beliefs of the era, has a special quality and certain timelessness to it. “A good friend always joked about how, when he was 19, he felt his parents knew nothing, but by the time he was 29, he was amazing how much they had learned!”
Credits
Photography Paul Graham